Accenture’s digital portal helps product engineers accelerate deliveries to market

NEW YORK, 2 Feb. 2016. Accenture (NYSE:ACN) has launched The Accenture Enterprise Product Information and Content (EPIC) Portal, designed for companies that design, engineer, and manufacture complex products in the aerospace, electronics, automotive, consumer products, industrial equipment, high-tech, and life science industries. Aerospace engineers are already using the EPIC portal, company officials say.

Accenture developed the EPIC portal to help product engineers and developers increase efficiency and accelerate delivery of products to market at lower costs.

The EPIC Portal consolidates large amounts of product development data from multiple enterprise systems in a single, organized view, reducing the time needed for product developers to search for this data by up to 95 percent. The portal features pre-defined integration with product lifecycle management, enterprise resource planning and a range of other applications used in product design and production.

Leveraging this portal, professionals can use analytics to anticipate and solve problems, as well as develop insights and make better-informed decisions, officials say.

“Throughout large, complex companies, product developers grapple with data scattered across too many siloed databases, complicated system user interfaces, and cumbersome access to analytics and product data reports,” affirms Kevin Prendeville, a managing director in Accenture’s Product Lifecycle Services business. “The EPIC portal equips engineers with one integrated source to identify risks and speed product deliveries whenever they need to, wherever they are, which increases efficiency and lowers costs.”

For example, a supply chain procurement engineer with an automotive manufacturer could use the EPIC portal to more rapidly ascertain the engineering status of automotive parts and avoid delays delivering products to market. Knowing this status also benefits numerous other corporate groups, including engineering, sourcing, quality, marketing, manufacturing, and operations.

“Accenture’s product information portal addresses a common product innovation pain point,” says Jeff Hojlo, IDC program director for Product Innovation Strategies. “The product lifecycle management (PLM) portal encompasses all product innovation content in an organization ranging from PLM, enterprise, quality, or compliance systems. These capabilities are not meant to replace PLM provider capabilities; rather, they are meant to complement them and extend PLM information to the global team.”

With approximately 373,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture is a global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology, and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions – underpinned by the world’s largest delivery network – Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders.